VILNIUS – THE MOST NOTHERN BAROQUE CITY OF EUROPE

Baroque (1) is an entire epoch of culture when the Catholic Church started expanding the boundaries of its influence in all spheres of cultural life seeking to tie creative work to religious experiences (2). It was Catholicism that became a precondition for Baroque culture to spread from Italy and Spain to other Catholic countries. The most distant in the North was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with its capital Vilnius. Baroque reached the Grand Duchy of Lithuania through the Jesuit Order at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. (3) Experienced painters of other friaries also arrived in Vilnius. The Royal court of the Vasa dynasty in Vilnius (4) became the source of Baroque culture towards which the families of the noblemen oriented themselves. Vilnius University enriched European culture with significant works on rhetoric, theory of poetry, logic, philosophy and theology. University observatory was the first one in Europe and the fourth one in the world. It was Vilnius University with its multinational professorate that involved the most easterly edges of the then Europe into the mature system of science and education of the Baroque epoch. Baroque art was created by the masters who arrived in Vilnius from different countries of Europe, and later a unique Vilnius School of Baroque (5) emerged and matured locally in architecture. Vilnius was the largest Baroque city North of the Alps, moreover, it was the most easterly one. Vilnius Baroque domes and towers harmonise originally with the medieval city plan (6). Baroque became common in architecture of churches, monasteries and palaces, penetrated houses, things of the city dwellers. Baroque in Vilnius has left a significant heritage of sculpture (7), painting (8), literature (9), works of applied art (10), and the new branch of art – theatre (11). Baroque art of Vilnius unites different ethnic and confessional origins (12) testifying to the diverse reality of the state of that time.